Talk:Explorer/@comment-5151386-20161227215914/@comment-31411324-20170228002246
Right now there is no point to scan anything, except for novelty value of getting your name into something you happen to discover first. Kit Anaconda with first class cabins and 7A scoop, no shields. I'd take autodocking module too but that's up to you. Other than that, kit it as light as possible, use biggest A grade FSD, engineered with grade 3+ upgrade for range. Lots of heat sinks for silent run and close brushes with stars when scooping. Pick a place that has lots of long distance passenger missions. Fehu is one option but there's plenty of others. You should run some other missions first to get your reputation up with local factions. Then have a look at passenger missions, and pick a data scan mission with destination that's over 5,000 ly away, but not much longer than that. 5,000 is good number because one engineer requires you to have traveled 5,000 from starting point to unlock. I used Cerberus as destination myself. Fill all your cabins with passenger missions to that same destination. It will take you a while to find them, but you have 4 weeks total so don't worry. If it takes you a couple hours or more to fill up all cabins that's fine. Or you can log in, check the board, log out, and log in again some other time later. Missions should reset about every 10 minutes. Try to pick missions that fill each cabin as full as possible. Give preference to those that require first class as they tend to give best money. I think all of the passengers are 'low value targets' and not criminal, but I'm not sure - either way make absolutely certain those conditions are met. NO high value targets. NO criminals. Once you are filled up, do the trip. 'Conda should be able to do about 35 ly warps or more, even filled up. You can do about 1 warp per minute, with a bit of slack there you can travel about 2,000 ly per hour. For 6000 ly destination then a round-trip would take about 6 hours - but you can log out to take breaks when you feel. Return, dock, profit. The worst part will be docking back to station - your passengers don't want your hull to get damaged, and don't want to get scanned. You'll need to dock in silent run, without autodock and without shields - until you are well inside the station. I still took autodock module so I don't bump the landing pad right at the end.. but if you use autodock make absolutely certain you are well inside the station before throttling down - otherwise the autodock may twist your ship around when it's still in acess tube. I lost 15% hull that way once. Since you want to dock as fast as possible to avoid scans, here's something that might help: The stations usually seem to be facing their access away from sun. Try flying PAST the station first, then stop, turn around, and approach from opposite side from the sun. This usually seems to bring me to side that has access, which gives me less time in scanner range of security. If you are not on the access port side, you can try to note the orientation of the station, then warp out to supercruise and move to access port side of station.. then warp back in. One trip can net you about 100 million. Two trips will take you from zero to elite. You don't even need to carry a scanner in your ship. Disclaimer: I was Pathfinder already from having done the 'vanilla scanning' before horizons, and Ranger before I took these missions. It's possible that the best paying missions aren't available earlier on, so you may need to start up with a couple of shorter ranged missions first to get through the early ranks. At ranger, the best paying missions to Cerberus were 30 million each (to class 6 first class cabins) and next tier down were 17 million each (I think those were to class 5 first class cabins). With Anaconda filled with cabins - you do the math. Class 6 is biggest cabin, and 'Conda has one clas 7 slot. I used that for 7A fuel scoop because having a big scoop will shave a lot of time away from waiting for your tank to refill. At the moment the passenger mission rewards are totally disproportionate to the rank-up - they reward about same as trader missions, but trader rank requires 10 times the value to progress. To make this at least marginally sensible, exploration missions should count only 10% towards rank-up. I expect this to be tuned in the future, but this is the situation right now. --- edit --- Just a quick note - 2.3 beta patch notes mention a reduction in explorer passenger rewards, so once 2.3 comes to live servers, this post will be outdated.